Posted
by
samzenpuson Thursday April 07, 2011 @10:27AM
from the every-word-on-the-bus dept.

arcticstoat writes "A few net-speak acronyms such as LOL and OMG were entered to the Oxford English Dictionary last month, but could we ever see l33t-speak (complete with numbers) or ROFLcopters in the OED? In this interview with OED principal editor Graeme Diamond, he reveals the selection criteria for new words and discusses the potential for words such as 'l33t' to get into the dictionary. 'L33t is obviously a respelling and a contraction [of elite],' says Diamond, 'so it would be a separate entry, and yes it is familiar to me, so I think it's something we would consider for inclusion.'"

"... 'L33t is obviously a respelling and a contraction [of elite],' says Diamond, 'so it would be a separate entry, and yes it is familiar to me, so I think it's something we would consider for inclusion.'"

On the plus side, I no longer feel guilty about using dictionary.reference.com rather than the Oxford English Dictionary.

"... 'L33t is obviously a respelling and a contraction [of elite],' says Diamond, 'so it would be a separate entry, and yes it is familiar to me, so I think it's something we would consider for inclusion.'"

On the plus side, I no longer feel guilty about using dictionary.reference.com rather than the Oxford English Dictionary.

I hope you're not one of the many/.ers who complains when Wikipedia deletes entries;-)

Why? A dictionary's job is to track the definition and usage of words, not to actually decide what those definitions and usages are. A dictionary that fails to do that, for whatever reason, is in fact failing to do what it's intended to do.

As a friend of mine once pointed out: language is not just about communicating information, it's (possibly just as importantly) about hiding it.

More specifically, we modify language in order to identify members of our social groups in ways that those outside of those groups do not understand. As a social group gains dominance, so too do their modifications to the language. Of course, the process of gaining a dominant position in a human society is an inherently contentious one.

There's plenty of thieves' cant in the OED. Why shouldn't the dictionary document the language that people actually speak and write, rather than some made-up pseudo-platonic "ideal" language that bears only a faint resemblance to an actual human language. And what's the difference between a "prescriptivist" in linguistics and a creationist in biology? At least descriptivists do something that actually resembles science. The prescriptivists (like the creationists) don't seem to contribute anything more u

Prescriptivists claim that dictionaries and grammars should be style guides, or pedagogical tools. Descriptivists pretend to be more scientific.

The reality is, descriptivists are closet (or raging) liberals, who are happy to leave minorities in the ghetto, without a guide out. And prescriptivists are conservatives, who see themselves guiding the uneducated into the light.

The difference is, prescriptivists know both sides of the argument, as they were young and naive once too.

I definitely agree here. Just because 'Leet' is commonly written with numeric substitutions more often than many other words doesn't mean it should be put in a dictionary as such. A huge number of words are either commonly or slightly less written such substitutions, abbreviations, and letter order swaps (and not even in the same way for each word).

Listing these would be nearly the equivalent of a dictionary beginning to start listing common misspellings of words too.

If something often appears in written texts, the OED should list it. The idea is that someone encountering an unfamiliar word should be able to use the OED to find what it it means. The OED differs from some other dictionaries in this matter: it is descriptive, not prescriptive. If a word is or was used often enough with a definable meaning in the written corpus, the OED intends to list it.

I suspect you're being facetious. Words in the OED always come with a pronunciation guide, so it will tell you exactly how "1337" should be pronounced, and this doesn't create some new linguistic rule which overwrites all other numeric pronunciation.

Precisely, the OED is a record of language, not a guardian of it. You wouldn't normally find slang and contractions in your average dictionary because they are concise, but the full OED includes those things.

Obviously you are not British*. Of course Oxbridge [wikipedia.org]'s presses (OUP [oup.com], CUP [cambridge.org]) are the guardian of English as much as L'Académie française [academie-francaise.fr] is the guardian of the French (sorry, française) language. Don't let the Telegraph [telegraph.co.uk] tell you any different.

Well I sure as hell don't see a short for 'elite' leaping to mind. I agree about gullible not being in there is long overdue and this chicken scratch with numerals being short-hand for another formal word doesn't even have a place in slang.

There's no developmental deficiency (cognitive or otherwise) involved in the creation of contractions. In English, we've often denoted these with apostrophes, but they're not required. Adding new contractions to the language is usually a gradual process, and I'm sure the same will be true for leet... it's been in use for the better part of a generation, now, so it's definitely getting to the point that we should consider it seriously.

L33t? Wtf is wrong with these people?

The OED, contrary to what some may feel about it, isn't an arbiter of lang

You do know that the "English Flag" (a red cross of St. George on a white ground) is not on that page?
Perhaps the flag that you meant is the Union Flag (or Union Jack) of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

Why do you not take the OED seriously? Do you believe it lists words not in use, or that it gives incorrect definitions.

One thing it does not do, which you may be expecting, is make any judgement about/proper/ usage. It is descriptive, not prescriptive. If you are expecting guidance as to good usage, look elsewhere. But take the OED as a source of actual, as opposed to good, usage.

They wonder because the OED gives the etymology of each term and thus tells you how it is considered appropriate to use by the majority when the term is coined. Have you ever browsed the unabbreviated OED? It's a fantastic journey.

If you don't agree with their criteria for considering words for inclusion, that's fine. And if that causes you to not take them seriously, that's fine too. But to suggest, even hyperbolically, that you actually laugh at people who disagree with your assessment says far more about you than it does about them or about the OED.

Erm, the OED describes the way in which words are used by the people that use them.

Even better, the OED is a scholarly work that discusses etymology as well. Want to know when 31337 was first used? It would be in the OED entry, along with the origins of the word elite. That's useful information and much more extensively discussed in the OED than in any other dictionary. The OED is an incredible resource.

l33tadj. 1. elite, highly adept esp. referring to a video game player, 2. worthy of praise"Dude, the OED put in an entry for l33t! That's some l33t dictionary pwnage!"-- some Anonymouse Coward on Slashdot

"His crown, a noble emblem of defeatFor those who would make light of being l33t."--- William Shakespeare

"STFU NOOB, UR JUST JEALOUS CUZ WERE L33T AND U SUCK ASS"--- sipherot299lol, an anemic 13-year-old about to get a cap in his virtual avatar's ass

Two things - first, look at urbandictionary.com. Yes, you can find essentially any slang term there if you already heard it - but you'll get hundreds of alternate definitions, and then there are thousands of terms people have added that are not actually widely used slang. If you were unfamiliar with English slang and tried to use that source, you'd have major problems. That's not to say that a better implementation isn't possible (and there are printed slang dictionaries already that are carefully edited), it just illustrates many of the problems in undertaking such a task.

Second, the OED apparently wishes to be a source of information about how the language is actually used - it updates things as meanings change over time. So you can read something written in not-necessarily-the-Queen's-English, probably online, and look up new words and slang and understand them. Other dictionaries don't do this as aggressively. The OED contains *many* slang terms, but only adds them once they've gained demonstrable widespread cultural impact. Whether or not "leet" or "l33t" qualifies is a separate debate, but you have to understand what the OED is trying to do in order to say whether or not such slang should be included at all, and they've already decided that it should be.

I don't generally use much slang, nor do I often consult a dictionary, but I agree that widespread slang belongs in a dictionary of actual English usage and in other respects the OED is certainly a fine dictionary as far as I can tell.

You do realize that a considerable portion of the dictionary is dedicated to slang and typos, right? I realize that there's a lot of l33t English majors out there that stroke off whenever somebody misspells something, but such people really ought to just go fornicate with some sort of sharp pointy object, and leave the language to those that actually use it.

Agreed. It always makes me chuckle to hear people (especially English teachers who should know better) decry the use of slang and yet hark back to Shakespeare as a paragon of the language, despite the fact that, at the time, he riddled his works with slang, and even words he invented, to make them more accessible to the people. Language is primarily about communication, tying ourselves to an archaic set of rules doesn't advance that goal, it's just elitism. Sorry, I really didn't intend the pun!

I think that we have to remember the theory behind the OED. The OED is an avowedly *descriptive* dictionary. It's goal is to define words as they are or have been used. It is also massive, and attempts to capture as many words as possible, to be definitive about the language, or at least the British version of it. Browse through the OED and you'll find words that are antiquated slang that haven't been used since the 18th century, things like that. "Leet" or "1337" or whatever would seem to fit in there some

I'm an OUP employee, I work on http://oxforddictionaries.com/ [oxforddictionaries.com] and I sit just over a partition from the OED team so I guess I'm well placed to comment on this one.
For a start, it already is in our dictionaries. http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/leet [oxforddictionaries.com] . Unfortunately though they have lemmatised it (rendered it into its simplest form) as the rather lame-sounding 'leet' rather than '1337'. Hey, give them a break, they're English graduates!
This probably has a root in their research. Analysing the corpus to find out how much the word is used, they are probably ignoring numbers because their job is to look for words.
This infographic showing our inclusion process might be illuminating: http://oxforddictionaries.com/page/newwordflowchart/how-a-new-word-enters-an-oxford-dictionary [oxforddictionaries.com]

No point. Any dictionary worth mentioning, and many that aren't, has notes on the usage of a word. "Slang", "Vulgar", "Archaic" and "Alternate Spelling" are common. Some dictionaries will even note "Regional Dialect", "Technical Jargon", "Pidgin English", and even "Americanism". I don't think it would be that hard for them to add "Internet Slang", "Fictional Language" and "Marketing Speak" to that.

Besides, every word in the dictionary was a "made up word" at some point. Who would stand judge of when a word had been around long enough or was in popular enough usage that it should be deemed a proper word?

To my memory l33t speak has its roots in the 'hacker' (or more correctly 'cracker') subculture. First started appearing on warez releases which would advertise BBS numbers, sometimes listing the numbers in plain text (for anyone to access) and sometimes listing as 'elite only' (meaning private access)

As time passed 'l33t' started appearing when refering to those with access to the private numbers. It was used sincerely for a short period, but soon turned into a term solely for mockery. 'l33t speak' followed

As I recall the original thrust of 1337-speak was to attempt to avoid automated network keyword detectors (hypothetically operated by investigative and law enforcement agencies) by distorting the words so they were still readable (with some effort) but would be missed by simple word and phrase detection software. As such they were supposed to be continually warping.

Of course the distortions (both of symbol or symbol group substitution and word contraction and modification) quickly became sufficiently stand

I understand putting LOL and OMG because they are abbr. but putting in a word that is originally formed from a misspelling is a bit of an insult for the American language. I thought only correctly spelled words went into the dictionary?

Absolutely not. A dictionary attempts to document the language as it is actually used, not prescribe some standard for it. Different dictionaries concentrate on different parts of the language for different purposes. The OED's range is one of the broadest, as it tries to cover all variants of the English language and its entire history.

(Exceptions to this are languages (notably: French) which have a ruling body prescribing a single "correct

Standardized spelling and grammar, on the other hand, was something the education establishment in the United States attempted to impose. This has had limited success. Its main effect has been to promote the east-coast regional variant of the language as "correct" and that users of other variants do so because they are stupid or ignorant. This helps the self-proclaimed urban elites delude themselves - and others - that they are more intelligent and thus suited to rule.

So standardized spelling and grammar is nothing more than an oppressive political plot, huh? You don't think it might just possibly enhance the clarity of written communication to have some standards to which everyone can appeal? How is standard English orthography prejudicial against the West Coast, as you seem (perhaps somewhat carelessly) to imply? Or against the South? Or Wyoming? Ah, but you clearly don't have to advance any arguments for your all-encompassing assertions, just the mere witless assertio

People are fucking morons, and this proves it. This is exactly the kind of unintelligent trash that needs to be kept out of the dictionary. The people who maintain the oxford-english dictionary should be fired.

It is a way of "encoding" words. While l33t is the most common example, 1337 is also common and every other word in the english language has at least a few variations in ll33t speak and they cannot all be included.

It's "can do so with pride" - I made the same mistake of thinking it was an opening bracket until I realised there was no closing bracket and it was actually a C (note there's no "d" for it to be "and"). Also, I can't believe I just typed this. I plead extreme boredom.

The point of the OED is that it includes information about how English is actually used, meaning it includes slang and such things. So if you're just learning English, you can consult it while reading someone's poorly written English on the internet and understand fairly well.

Not that you can't easily find definitions for slang and acronyms elsewhere, but the OED is a respected (if not authoritative) source, and when you're learning another language (or just improving your knowledge of your native language)

Oxford dictionaries are descriptive rather than prescriptive, which is to say they describe how the language is evolving rather than telling people how to use it. They are based on a lot of solid research on a multi-billion-word corpus of contemporary English as well as a huge printed gorpus of the last thousand years plus of written English. Thus if Igpay Atinlay (or any other "odd" word) started to show up significantly in the corpus of contemporary English then yes, it would merit its own entry.